Keynote speakers
Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians. She also chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch and is a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Maude is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates as well as many awards, including the 2005 Right Livelihood Award(known as the “Alternative Nobel”), the Citation of Lifetime Achievement at the 2008 Canadian Environment Award, and the2009 Earth Day Canada Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award. She is also the best selling author or co-author of 16 books, including the recently released Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and The Coming Battle for the Right to Water.
John Cavanagh has been Director of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies since 1998. He is the co-author of 12 books and numerous articles on the global economy, most recently Development Redefined: How the Market Met Its Match (2009, Paradigm Publishers), written with Robin Broad. With Maude Barlow, John led the effort to detail a new global economy in the International Forum on Globalization book, Alternatives to Economic Globalization. He is co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, an organization that is putting forward transformative visions of a new economy that serves people and the planet.
John has a BA from Dartmouth College and a MA from Princeton University. He worked as an international economist for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (1978-1981) and the World Health Organization (1981-1982). He is on the boards of the International Forum on Globalization, the International Labor Rights Forum, and ProgressiveCongress.org, and is a member of the Civil Society Advisory Committee of the UN Development Program.
Garry Leech is an independent journalist and editor of Colombia Journal. During the past decade, Garry’s work has focused on U.S. foreign policy in Colombia and on the consequences of neoliberal globalization for people in both the global North and the global South. He is the author of several books including Beyond Bogotá: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia (Beacon Press, 2009) and Crude Interventions: The United States, Oil and the New World (Dis)Order (Zed Books, 2006). He is also co-author with Terry Gibbs of The Failure of Global Capitalism: From Cape Breton to Colombia and Beyond (CBU Press, 2009) and with Aviva Chomsky and Steve Striffler of The People Behind Colombian Coal: Mining, Multinationals and Human Rights (Pisando Callos, 2007). Garry’s articles have appeared in publications in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and Latin America. He also teaches international politics at Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia and is a member of the Atlantic Regional Solidarity Network (ARSN).
Panelists
Shannon Biggs directs the Community and Green Rights organizing at Global Exchange, a U.S.-based education and action resource centre. She assists communities to confront the corporate (and State) harms they face in a new way: by asserting local governing rights to enact binding laws that place the rights of communities and nature above the claimed “rights” of corporations. She is a national lecturer of Democracy Schools, which teaches this model of grassroots rights-based activism. She is also the author of the book Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots. Previously, she was the Director of Operations at the International Forum on Globalization, and a lecturer of International Relations at San Francisco State University.
Janice Harvey is a native of Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick. Following a career in teaching, Janice followed her passion for environmental issues by serving as Executive Director of the Conservation Council, one of Canada’s oldest environmental organizations. She has also held the positions of Vice President and Director of Friends of the Earth Canada, Chair of the Canadian Environmental Network and New Brunswick Environmental Network, Advisor to the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund, and is a founding member of the Environmental Choice Eco-logo program. In 1990 Janice established the New Brunswick Conservation Council’s Marine Conservation Program and served as the program’s director until 2007 when she returned to university to pursue graduate studies.
Marc Lee researches and writes on a variety of economic and social policy issues for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative’s B.C. and national offices. Marc has published on a wide range of topics – from poverty and inequality to globalization and international trade to public services and regulation. Marc is the co-director of the Climate Justice Project, a five-year research partnership with the University of British Colombia's School of Community and Regional Planning, and examines the links between climate change policies and social justice. Marc chairs the Progressive Economics Forum (PEF), a national network of economists, and contributes regularly to PEF’s blog Relentlessly Progressive Economics.
Peggy Nash is Assistant to CAW President Ken Lewenza. She is a senior CAW negotiator, responsible for bargaining in the transportation and education sectors. She was the first labour woman in North America to lead bargaining in the auto sector. Peggy was elected as an NDP Member of Parliament in the Toronto riding of Parkdale-High Park and served as a member of the House of Commons Committee on Industry Science and Technology. She is the recipient of two environmental awards from the Sierra Club of Canada for her work helping to create the NDP Green Car Strategy with Greenpeace and the Canadian Auto Workers. Presently, Peggy is a member of the Board of Directors for Invest Toronto.
Andrea Lea Peart was formerly with the Sierra Club of Canada and federal New Democratic Party. She now works with the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) in Government Relations and Women's Issues, and most recently as the National Representative, Health, Safety and Environment. Andrea authored the CLC’s Energy Task Force Background paper, evaluating the energy mix and sustainable energy path forward for the labour movement, and wrote Climate Change: Labour's Challenges and Opportunities policy paper, which passed unanimously at the CLC's national Convention. In collaboration with a number of other researchers, Andrea founded the Green Jobs Round Table, a collaborative project between labour and environmental organizations in Canada. Currently Andrea has been focusing on green job creation and the urgent need for Canada to act on the climate crisis.
Scott Sinclair lives in rural Prince Edward Island and is a Senior Research Fellow with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives where he directs the centre’s Trade and Investment Research Project. He has advised several Canadian provincial and territorial governments on trade policy matters, including as a senior policy advisor to the Government of British Columbia. He is the author of numerous books, articles and papers on trade policy including Putting Health First: Canadian Health Care Reform, Trade Treaties and Foreign Policy (with Matthew Sanger), a background study prepared for the Romanow Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, Atlantica: Myths and Reality (with John Jacobs) and Facing the Facts: A Guide to the GATS Debate (with Jim Grieshaber-Otto). He is currently working on a study of the impacts of the proposed Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement on public services and public interest regulation.
